


we will flower again

by nikkiRA



Category: Persona 5
Genre: 5+1 Things, Getting Together, M/M, Pining, except it's 3+1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:13:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26984200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nikkiRA/pseuds/nikkiRA
Summary: The day before Goro Akechi dies, Akira Kurusu tells him he loves him.
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist
Comments: 10
Kudos: 213





	we will flower again

**Author's Note:**

> title from what death leaves behind by los campesinos!

* * *

i.

* * *

The day before Goro Akechi dies, Akira Kurusu finds him in Kichijoji and gives him that soft smile of his, blurred at the edges. The night is cold, and when he asks Akechi to come to the jazz club with him, his breath puffs out visible in front of him. 

He hesitates, which is his first mistake. There should be no hesitation -- there should just be  _ no.  _ No, he couldn’t go to the jazz club. No, he couldn’t hang out. He had an entire operation to deal with, hundreds of officers to sneak into the Metaverse, a betrayal to plan out. By this time tomorrow Akira Kurusu’s brains will be splattered on the walls of an interrogation room, and Akechi can stop pretending that he could ever be anything other than this. 

“Surely you have more important things to do on your last night as a Phantom Thief?” He says, which, he is annoyed to say, is not a  _ no.  _ Akira shrugs, hands in his pockets. His irritating cat is absent, Akechi notices. 

“Who says this isn’t important?” He says, eyes sparkling. Akechi takes a deep breath, takes a moment to envision him with a bullet in his head. It doesn’t help to calm him down. 

“Flirting with me won’t get you anywhere,” Akechi says, which is an outright lie, frankly, but Akira doesn’t call him on it. Instead he leans back against the wall beside Akechi and looks up at the dark sky. His jacket is undone, pale neck exposed. Akechi doesn’t know if he wants to wrap a scarf around it or sink his teeth into it. 

“I don’t know,” Akira says conversationally. “It always makes you blush.”

Akechi’s hand flies up to his face; Akira’s lips quirk up, and Akechi scowls at him.

“You want to waste your last night with me?” Akira doesn’t know, of course, that it really  _ is  _ his last night. Akira has no idea that everything Akechi has told him is a lie. He just thinks it’s the end of his rotten squad of merry men. But it is his last night; he’ll be dead tomorrow, and he doesn’t know it, and he wants to spend the night with Akechi as if he was  _ worth  _ something, and it’s ridiculous. 

“It’s not a waste,” Akira says. (He does not deny that it is his last night -- perhaps that should have been Akechi’s first clue.)

“You’re insane,” Akechi says. He can’t bring himself to put on his Detective Prince mask; even if he thought he had the energy, it doesn’t feel right. He doesn’t want to wear a mask around Akira. Not more than he already is. Not tonight.

He doesn’t want to think about what that means. Doesn’t want to think about how this idiotic, unimportant attic trash is the one person in the whole world that Akechi doesn’t want to lie to. 

Akira doesn’t answer, just waits. Akechi sighs. “Fine. Let’s go,” he says, and when Akira turns to smile at him, he finds he can’t stare directly at it, as if it were the sun. 

* * *

Akira doesn’t say anything -- perhaps that should have been his second clue. He stares at Akechi with wide eyes, speechless, and in his manic state of mind he thinks that he’s surprised Akira Kurusu silent. 

(As if.)

He gets a snazzy line in, too, and when he looks back on this he’ll be embarrassed by it, but for now it just proves how in control he is, how ahead of the game, how much smarter. It means he  _ wins.  _ He’s mostly used to killing, or at least he can trick himself into thinking he is, and his hand doesn’t shake at all when he shoots the guard (he’s not just a guard -- Akechi knows his name, knows his story, knows his family. His hand does shake, actually, but only a little). 

His hand doesn’t shake at all when he holds the gun to Akira’s head, either (he’s lying). His eyes are blank and emotionless, which should have been his third clue, but he doesn’t want to look at them. Looking at Akira for too long makes his throat swell, makes his hands sweat, makes the walls close in. Looking at Akira reminds him of the way he’d smiled at him last night, sitting too close in the darkness of the jazz club, and if Akechi had shifted only a little their thighs would have lined up. All night long he spent trying to decide if he was too much of a coward to do it or too much of a coward  _ not  _ to, and by the end of the night Akira paid for his drinks and they walked back to the train station and it might have been a  _ date,  _ except Akechi was supposed to put a bullet in his head. Just before they’d separated Akira had swept a piece of Akechi’s hair out of his eyes, and in another life he would have leaned in and kissed him, but instead he stepped away before Akira’s touch could burn his skin. 

He puts the gun to Akira’s head. He doesn’t look into his eyes. He pulls the trigger immediately; he knows that if he gives himself even half a second, he won’t do it. 

Akira Kurusu bleeds out; Goro Akechi’s fragile, faltering heart breaks beyond repair. 

* * *

ii. 

* * *

The day before Goro Akechi dies, he thumbs through the photos on his phone and finds one of Akira Kurusu. He doesn’t remember when it was taken -- Akira is making a peace sign at the camera while in the background Akechi can see himself, signing autographs for a few fans. He must have taken his phone at some point. It’s the only picture on his phone that isn’t work related or a dog picture shamefully stolen from the internet. His thumb hovers over the delete button. 

He’s alive, Akechi knows. He isn’t sure how, but he is. Tomorrow he would go into Shido’s Palace, and he would kill him properly this time. No more tricks, no more slip ups. Just the two of them, the way it always was. Just the two of them and the full extent of Akechi’s power. He would fight until it killed him; he was going to make sure that either he killed Akira, or Akira killed him. There would be no getting out of this fight unscathed. He’s beginning to think that they’re not supposed to exist simultaneously. That there is only room for one of them. 

He is going to make sure he’s the last one standing. 

His thumb hovers over the delete button still. Akira has a shit-head smile on his face, eyes half hidden due to the glare on his glasses. He is effortlessly beautiful in a way that makes Akechi sick. 

He lets the phone drop to his stomach, photo untouched. 

* * *

It all goes slowly, at the end. Time slows down until it’s at a complete standstill, and Akechi can see them all, the Phantom Thieves and his cognitive self and Akira, staring down his gun again. He doesn’t look afraid; he just looks sad. 

He has a few options. The first is he could shoot Akira, but the idea of that makes his head spin, and he looks into Akira’s eyes, so expressive behind his mask, and he realizes that Akira was always going to win. 

That leaves only one option. 

He shoots the gun. Akira’s eyes follow it; when he sees where it hit, he turns to Akechi and yells. 

Always so quick on the uptake. 

_ “No,”  _ he says, a hoarse, desperate noise, but the doors are closing and there’s nothing he can do about it. Akechi looks at his cognitive double and sees nothing but disappointment. 

It’s fine. He’s used to disappointing himself. 

“Let’s make a deal,” he says, as his double pushes the gun into his forehead. “You won’t say no, will you?”

He closes his eyes; he remembers a lullaby his mother used to sing to him. He remembers Akira. He remembers -- 

The trigger is pulled, and he doesn’t remember anything. 

* * *

iii. 

* * *

The day before Goro Akechi dies, Akira Kurusu tells him he loves him. 

He is standing in the middle of Leblanc, fists clenched, unshed tears making his eyes shine. There is still a chill in the air from when Maruki had left. Akechi looks at him like he’s grown three heads. 

“What do you expect me to do with that?”

“I don’t expect anything,” Akira says. Akechi is relieved to hear that his voice doesn’t shake. “I just wanted you to know. I don’t want you to die thinking you aren’t wanted.”

“I’m  _ not _ wanted,” Akechi says. “Just because you were stupid enough to fall in love with me doesn’t change that fact.”

He’s not completely heartless. He knows he’s being mean. But dead men can’t love, and he will not take Akira’s still beating heart down with him. 

Akira says, “You were the only one I ever wanted to save.” Akechi tastes blood. 

“Too bad,” Akechi says harshly. “I refuse to live in a world controlled and manipulated by that egomaniac.”

Akira suddenly reaches out and grabs the front of his shirt; for a minute Akechi thinks he’s going to kiss him, or maybe punch him. In the end he does neither, just stands like that, hands fisted in Akechi’s scarf, head bowed low. Akechi clenches his fists, fights down the urge to reach out and run his fingers through Akira’s hair. 

“Akira,” he says, soft and low. “What are you going to do?”

Akira lifts his head; his eyes are clear, tears unshed. He looks like himself again, and since Akechi is going to die tomorrow he allows himself one single, traitorous thought:  _ I love you, too. _

“I won’t take the deal,” he says. His voice doesn’t falter once, and Akechi believes him. 

It still hurts, though.

* * *

In the end, ceasing to exist is a lot less painful than dying. But neither of them are anywhere near as painful as living is. 

* * *

+i

* * *

The day Goro Akechi comes back to life, he has a broom in his hands, and Akira Kurusu is frozen in the doorway. 

His fingers clench on the handle; he immediately regrets that he’s not wearing gloves. Akira takes a few steps forward, down the hall closer to him. His eyes are wide. Goro has a lot of thoughts, and he can’t make sense of any of them. 

He says: “How did you find me?”

Akira says: “You’re alive.”

Goro opens his mouth to say -- something, he isn’t sure what, but Akira moves down the hall and grabs him, pulling him in for a hug before Goro can decide how he feels about it. His arms wrap snugly around Goro, bodies pressed flush. Akira is so warm, and Goro is going to burn up. 

He should be dead. He should have died in Shido’s black heart, and he didn’t. The doctor at the center told him that meant the life he was living now was a gift, and even if he doesn’t really believe that this, at least, feels like it. A gift wrapped in a nice bow. Akira Kurusu shaking in his arms as he mutters Goro’s name over and over into his neck, a litany of  _ your alive  _ that for the first time makes him glad he is. 

Goro hugs him back. He drops the broom and wraps his arms around him and buries his face in Akira’s neck and he doesn’t even feel bad about it. 

“How did you find me?” He mutters into Akira’s warm skin. 

“Futaba,” he says, which does not need clarifying. 

“Why was she even looking for me?”  _ You thought I was dead. _

“Because I told her to,” Akira says, like it’s simple. Like asking your personal hacker to search for any sign of a dead man was a perfectly normal thing. 

Goro huffs half a laugh. “You never know when to give up.”

“Is there somewhere we can go? There’s a lot to talk about.”

“I --” He pulls away and is reminded of the broom on the floor. “I’m supposed to --”

“Akechi-san,” a voice says, and he looks up to see one of the councillors. Akira takes a step closer to him, hand gripping onto Goro’s arm almost posessively. Unsure if this was a threat or not. It should have been infuriating, but Goro found it kind of… nice, which meant the therapy was probably working, which was annoying. “I can take over here. You go talk to your friend.”

“I --” He doesn’t know what to say, so he doesn’t say anything. He just bows to the councillor before taking Akira by the wrist and dragging him away to an empty room. 

The door has barely clicked shut behind them when Akira shoves him up against the wall and shoves his tongue into Goro’s mouth. Goro grabs a hold of him and kisses back to the best of his ability, tangling a hair in Akira’s messy hair the way he’s always wanted to. 

“I thought you wanted to talk,” he mutters, when they pull away to breathe. 

“I do,” Akira says, which is at odds with the way he immediately kisses Goro again. “But I’ve wanted to do this for way longer.”

He’s curious at exactly  _ how  _ long, but he doesn’t want to pull away to ask. He’s not sure if he’s particularly good at kissing, but to be fair he’s not sure if Akira is, either. He just grabs on tighter, lets himself be pushed against the wall, lets Akira kiss him like he mattered. 

“I --” Akira pulls away, resting his forehead on Goro’s shoulder as they both take deep breaths. “I’m going home soon. My probation -- but I’m going to come back. After I graduate. I --” He looks up again. He’s not wearing his glasses. Goro vastly prefers him like this. 

He leans in to kiss him again; Akira cradles Goro’s face between his hands as if it was something precious. “Okay,” he says, and it is. “There’s time,” he says, and there is. 

**Author's Note:**

> twitter @felixfraldaddy


End file.
